Wednesday, December 04, 2013

NYTIMES - SAN FRANCISCO— There were times — after he told his parents he was gay, for example, and his mother wept and his father tried to hit him — when Fredy Bolvito curled up on a bench in Union Square here and cried because he had AIDS and no job and no place to stay and he felt, he said, that “my life was over.”

But there were also days when he sat on the bench in the square and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” looking up at the flags atop the Westin St. Francis hotel and thinking, “That’s breathtaking, that’s my American dream.” Or when he mingled with tourists, giving them directions to the cable cars, or gazed through the windows at the shoppers in Macy’s and was saddened by how rich and healthy they looked.

He scavenged for meals in garbage bins. He avoided the homeless shelters, where he had heard that gays were taunted, or worse. His “angel,” he said, was in the center of the square: the statue “Victory,” a trident in one hand, a wreath in the other.

“I would look at it at night and think, ‘Oh my God, that’s my hope,’ ” he said.

San Francisco is often viewed as a Mecca for gay people. But the warmth of the city’s welcome can quickly vanish for those who are poor.

City leaders were startled this year when a survey revealed that 29 percent of the homeless population —about 2,100 of the 7,350 people counted — identified themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

Bevan Dufty, the director of the city’s homelessness initiatives, said he was surprised the percentage held true for all age groups, even adults and the elderly. “What was really staggering was to see that it didn’t change as you got older,” he said.

The survey found that gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people who are homeless had higher rates of disability than homeless heterosexuals and were more likely to be homeless when they arrived in the city. Some of them were older gay men with AIDS who had been evicted from their apartments or people who had been cast out by their families in other states. Others, like Mr. Bolvito, a native of Guatemala who graduated from college in Hayward, Calif., with a degree in political science and once worked as a real estate agent, had good jobs that disappeared during the recession.

JUDGING BY THEIR FREQUENCY AND PROMINENCE, LGBT STORIES ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTEMPORARY ISSUE - AT LEAST ACCORDING TO THE POSTMODERN LEFTISTS EDITING THE NYTIMES.

THIS IS FINE - IF YOU WANT TO BE THE LGBT NEWSPAPER OF RECORD.

BUT IT'S A HUGE STEP DOWN FOR THE NEWSPAPER WHICH WAS ONCE THE INTERNATIONAL PAPER OF RECORD.

THE NYTIMES HAS TRADED IN THEIR ONCE WIDELY WELL-REGARDED OBJECTIVE REPORTING FOR PUSHING THE GRAMSCIAN AGENDA.

THEY'VE GONE FROM OBJECTIVE REPORTAGE TO SUBVERSIVE LIBERTINAGE.

THE MARQUIS DE SADE WOULD BE THRILLED.

GEORGE JONES AND HENRY RAYMOND - THE FOUNDERS OF THE NYTIMES - ARE SPINNING IN THEIR GRAVES.